MyEtherWallet’s DNS spoofed, $150,000 worth of [ETH] compromised

MyEtherWallet, the popular Ethereum web wallet, had its DNS spoofed which resulted in users being phished. This resulted in over $150,000 (215 ETH) being stolen.

The incident occurred when the DNS servers had resolved the domain to a server which hosted a phishing IP. Trusting users accessed the fake website with the private keys. This resulted in the hacker being able to siphon off over $150,000.

According to an official statement made by Kosala Hemachandra, founder of MEW:

It is our understanding that a couple of Domain Name System registration servers were hijacked at 12PM UTC to redirect myetherwallet[dot]com users to a phishing site.

This redirecting of DNS servers is a decade-old hacking technique that aims to undermine the Internet’s routing system. It can happen to any organization, including large banks. This is not due to a lack of security on the @myetherwallet platform. It is due to hackers finding vulnerabilities in public facing DNS servers.

A majority of the affected users were using Google DNS servers. We recommend all our users to switch to Cloudflare DNS servers in the meantime.

Affected users are likely those who have clicked the “ignore” button on an SSL warning that pops up when they visited a malicious version of the MEW website.

In one transaction, a person had lost over 85 ETH to the phishing attack.

The image below shows the address used for stealing the funds.

The funds were then siphoned off to this address.

Speculations were rife on Reddit that this may be an exchange address where the hacker would dispose of the ETH.

It is a sad reminder to crypto traders and enthusiasts to adopt basic security practices while navigating the wild west of cryptocurrencies.

Here are some pointers:

When you are accessing a website for the purpose of trading or transferring funds, it is a basic practice to check the DNS certificate of the website. If you are keen to use MEW, download the MEW client and use it rather than accessing the website.

At the same time, it is important not to store your funds in hot wallets. For large amounts, always use hardware wallets. Ledger and Trezor are some of the best in the business.

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